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Icelandic and Greenlandic | ||
Tags: Greenlandic | Icelandic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Malek Groupie Christmas Island Joined 4341 days ago 60 posts - 76 votes  | Message 17 of 31 10 January 2013 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Also, 'Canadian Inuit' is not simply a dialect of Greenlandic.
Why must language learners further this ridiculous idea? It's one step away from 'well, it's ONLY a dialect of X, lets force them to speak the real language...' (because 'dialect of...' is almost always interpreted by the general public as 'inferior to') p.s. Languages don't have 'logic', they have 'grammar'. :) Edited by Malek on 10 January 2013 at 1:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4845 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 18 of 31 10 January 2013 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know why but I hate "dialects", damn, it's so much better and interesting when everybody speaks the same language, when people understand eah other easily. I wish dialects would vanish, hopefully many are dying already 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 19 of 31 10 January 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am not familiar with Groenlandic/Inuit, but I get Icelandic and Faroese on my Facebook page constantly, because I have most of my family there, and they are really close. The languages. Not my family. Linguistically I guess they could be considered dialects of each other - just as sometimes people say that Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are just variations of the same language. I disagree, of course, but they are very close. I am not quite sure why people get upset by the idea though. MarcusOdim - I am assuming you are being sarcastic here? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Malek Groupie Christmas Island Joined 4341 days ago 60 posts - 76 votes | Message 20 of 31 10 January 2013 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Solfrid Christin, they are indeed very close (Greenlandic and Inuit languages). The issue is that many people often pick the politically/economically dominant language and determine that everything else close to it is simply a 'dialect'.
I think that all Indo-European languages (and other language families) are just a single language with varying forms. Much like the human species has many forms. Edited by Malek on 10 January 2013 at 6:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 21 of 31 10 January 2013 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, written Icelandic and Faroese are very close, but not the spoken languages. Both have very conservative orthographies which hail from Old Norse and don't represent the changes in pronunciation. Spoken Icelandic and Faroese are definitely NOT mutually intelligible, so stating the latter might be a dialect of the former is absolutely absurd! If Faroese was a dialect of Icelandic, then by the same logic Norwegian would be a dialect of Danish, Dutch a dialect of German, and Catalan a dialect of Spanish.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 22 of 31 11 January 2013 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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If I remember what I have read about Faroese, the reason the written language resembles Icelandic is that Faroese existed only as a spoken language for about 300 years. Faroese again became a written language in the mid-19th century when Venceslaus Hammershaimb devised a spelling system that would show the historical etymological similarities with Icelandic and Old Norse. The spoken language had changed a lot by then and I'm not sure how similar Faroese now is to Icelandic.
I am not a linguist but I do know that amongst people who study linguistics there are splitters and joiners. I believe splitters would say that the examples Josquin gives are indeed distinct languages based on lack of mutual intelligibility, but joiners would agree with Malek and say that they are simply somewhat divergent dialects. Edited by mick33 on 11 January 2013 at 12:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Earle Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6313 days ago 276 posts - 276 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Norwegian, Spanish | Message 23 of 31 11 January 2013 at 1:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Not sure I agree with your tree. :) You mean Dutch isn't a dialect of German? :) I had a German next door neighbor for nine years who considered it as such. And she was Schwäbisch! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 24 of 31 11 January 2013 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think this is where the classical " a language is a dialect with an army" comes in. I have a second cousin
from Iceland who due to some youthful indiscressions had to go to the Faroe Islands for some time, and he said that he did not need to learn it or do any course, they were mutually intelligible. Much like you could say for a Swede who goes to Denmark. i have never seen any definition of just how big the differences must be for you to consider them languages and not dialects linguistically, because politics is also a factor. Independent nations are more likely to insist on independent languages. I think the people of Moldava insist that their language is not Romanian - linguists may be less sure :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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